Father and daughter relationships have always been a complicated and intricate due to major differences and mutual love. The given assessment will focus on A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller, where the central characters are Catherine and Eddie. Although the girl is technically an orphaned niece of Eddie, he still treats her as a daughter. The relationship is dysfunctional, because the uncle does not respect the fact that Catherine is an adult. There is no consideration for her choices, and Eddie’s high level of protectionism towards his niece hinders his ability guide her, which is his main goal. For example, he states: “just remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away” (Miller, 2010, p. 16). However, this relationship impacts Rodolfo, where Eddie wants hurt him by faking an accident during boxing practice. The protagonist admits that all these attempts were due to his unpreparedness for Catherine becoming an adult, where he states: “that you would ever grow up” (Miller, 2010, p. 17). Therefore, the relationship dysfunctionality is mostly due to Eddie’s attitude towards his niece.
In the future, the main characters’ relationship will reach the normal range as soon as Eddie accepts Catherine as an adult. The key reason lies in the girl’s independence, because she will eventually leave the house and will have to rely on herself financially. Therefore, the suggestion is addressed towards Catherine, because she needs to become self-reliant and independent in order to remove the protectionism of Eddie. It is stated that father-daughter communication can be significantly hindered by the lack of emotional availability and paternal warmth (Demidenko et al., 2015). In other words, Eddie needs to accept his niece’s freedom and allow her make her own mistakes. Thus, one can observe that being excessively attached can also lead to dysfunctionality in a relationship.
References
Demidenko, N., Manion, I., & Lee, C. M. (2015). Father–daughter attachment and communication in depressed and nondepressed adolescent girls. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(6), 1727-1734. Web.
Miller, A. (2010). A view from the bridge. Penguin Books.